Noguchi pedestal sells for $320,500  

I defy anyone here
to arrive at more pleasant proportions among elements, than those exhibited by this little piece. Material isn't always precious -- but its worthy use can be divine.
Or -- maybe it's just firewood. Beauty is in the eye of blah blah yadayada ?

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My immediate thought was that it was something to sculpt on, part of his workshop, a bench.
Wrong?
Try this on for size though, $28 million

Now those *are* some pricey BTU's!
Thanks, Heath!

I imagine it was auctioned in...
I imagine it was auctioned in the UK, is there an artists royalty scheme there or in the US? Here and in France a percentage of the auction value goes back to the artist or their estate.
Its a good idea but usually the artist is long gone by the time their work is appreciated.

Auctioned n the UK? No.
The $320K pedestal was auctioned in the US and as you know, the $28M Dragons chair was in Paris.
Yes, there is a royalty scheme in parts of the USA. Here in California, for example, the Resale Royalties Act requires resellers of fine art to pay living artists (or their estates, if the artist has been dead for less than 20 years) 5% of every sale, with some limitations. The vast majority of resellers ignore or are unaware of the law.
[Edit: Changed the URL; this one actually works. See Section 986.]
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=civ&group=00001-01...

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Thanks for the link, unfortunate the law isn't applied, but no, I didn't know where the Grey chair was auctioned.

Christie's.
The half-billion-dollar YSL sale in 2009:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294

Wow! $2,000,000 for a little Calder!
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, yet... !

Let's not be silly...
There's not one thing special about that platform, aside from who had a hand in its creation.
I couldn't care less about ever owning that, aside from its monetary value. And as we know, money like power skews things.
To the happy new owner...

Fence sitter
Yes its a ridiculous price for such a banal thing but on the other hand it could be looked at as both a metaphorical and literal foundation and perhaps its the thought provoking employment of materials that is where the real value is.

Who, exactly, is being silly, Lunchbox?
It's a humble little pedestal crafted by a master to support his sculptures in a manner that he preferred. It's not art, per se, but there is art in it and it can't be separated from Noguchi except by ignorance (if it is authentic).
If you want silliness, witness those in my faux-rural suburban wet dream of a town driving their kids to soccer games in $80K luxury SUV's.

You're being silly, tktoo...
$300k on a platform = OK
$80k on a motor vehicle = not OK
Nonsense.
The point is you can talk about relative rarity and provenance until you're blue in the face. Doesn't make that piece any more impressive form wise. It's simple and straightforward and doesn't smack of Noguchi's work as a whole in any way.

In a world of many...
In a world of many billionaires, it can be easy to lose sight of just how much money a billion dollars is. There are regular posters on this forum who have not even been alive for a billion seconds. On the other hand 320,000 seconds is only a little less than four days. For the right wealthy bidders, getting a rare Noguchi base for their Noguchi sculpture could seem well worth it.
Given what an original Modernist sculpture could cost, adding another $320,000 for a base by the same artist would not seem like a big deal to me. And are we sure that pairing a sculpture with that base would not raise the value of the pair by an additional $400,000?
Of course, if these bases can be had elsewhere for much less money than that, I would concede that it would be a little crazy to spend so much for this particular one.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2011/12/16/noguchi-pedestal-sa...

Lunchbox, for argument's sake,
and nothing more:
Noguchi pedestal: $300K today, $300K+ next year.
Luxury SUV: $80K today, $38K next year.

Maybe, tktoo...
But there are no guarantees the platform will bring the same price later.
And if no one buys new cars where will the used ones come from?